Comparing Amontillado And The Fall Of The House Of Usher
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American author, critic, and editor Edgar Allan Poe is famous for his stories and poems of horror and mystery. He got the label of ‘father of modern horror literature’. Poe mainly emphasizes on the charm and intricacy of the narrator of the story. All the narrators he describes range from being just a bystander to a horrific murderer or a ruthless murderer. These can be seen in his two stories. In his story The Fall of the House of Usher the narrator is an innocent witness and in The Cask of Amontillado the narrator is a cold-blooded murderer.
The Cask of Amontillado has been regarded as Poe's most perfect short story. It is a perfect blend of dark humor filled with horror. This story is set in Italy and told almost 50 years after it had occurred.…show more content… For a moment she remained trembling and reeling to and fro upon the threshold - then, with a low moaning cry, fell heavily inward upon the person of her brother, and in her violent and now final death-agonies, bore him to the floor a corpse, and a victim to the terrors he had anticipated”(Poe 11).
The narrator here and Montresor have dissimilar views of death. While Montresor talks almost dotingly towards the final flashes of Fortunato’s life, this narrator feels much otherwise. His explanation of Madeline with “blood upon her white robes, and the evidence of some bitter struggle upon every portion of her emaciated frame” sets a very intense and disturbing image for the booklover. He sets a much altered nature for the reader in contrast to Montresor who bothers the reader due to the merciless killing of Fortunato. On the other hand, this narrator frightens the reader as Madeline “with a low moaning cry, fell heavily inward upon the person of her brother, and in her violent and now final death-agonies, bore him to the floor a corpse.” Here there is a much more detailed description of death as the narrator vividly describes it. In “The Cask of Amontillado” we are forced to assume Fortunato’s death. There
Death” are just two of his dark poems. Poe’s poems are almost always frightening and end in death. Some of his other poems are:
The Raven
Hop Frog
The Pit and the Pendulum
The Fall of the House of Usher
The Cask of